Free tool

Recipe cost calculator

See what a batch really costs you, per item, once labor and overhead are counted. The number plain ingredient math leaves out.

Your recipe

IngredientsCost

Makes how many

Other costs / batch

Packaging, labels

Your time (min)

Your rate / hour

True cost to make one

$1.60

Ingredients$0.28

Your labor$1.15

Packaging + other$0.17

Counting ingredients alone, you'd think it cost $0.28. Labor and overhead add $1.31 more. That's the part most makers leave out of the price.

Price at 70% margin

$5.32

Do this for every recipe

How it works

List what goes in the batch
Every ingredient with its amount, priced from what you actually paid at the store.
Add your hours and overhead
Your time at a real hourly rate ($15 to $25 is a reasonable maker range), plus packaging, booth share, and gas.
Divide by what the batch makes
The result is the true cost of one item. That number is the floor under every price you set.

$0.25

ingredients in the example cookie

$1.03

the labor and overhead on top

$1.28

what that cookie truly costs

Figures from the worked cookie example.

Common questions

Why is my true cost so much higher than my ingredients?

On baked goods your hours and overhead usually cost more than the ingredients. The cookie example here is $0.25 of ingredients and about $1.28 all in. The part you can see is almost always the smaller part.

What hourly rate should I use for my own labor?

A reasonable maker rate is $15 to $25 an hour. Pick the rate you would accept to do this exact work for someone else, then use the same rate every time so your prices stay consistent.

Is tripling my ingredient cost good enough?

It is a quick gut check, not a price. It assumes your labor and overhead are small, and on handmade goods they rarely are. Price from your own true cost instead.